Trial by Ink

"There are at least three aspects of this collection of essays which are both singular and superb. First, not surprisingly, the prose is incisive and yet evocative; Lababidi moves from the aphoristic and the epigrammatic to the suggestive, the lightly hinted, the nuanced, with impressive ease. This is a rare gift, more associated with European writers than with American. This striation of tone, of register, of mood, gives a sense of surprise to his sentences; they spring back to the touch. Sometimes they even seem surprised at themselves. Secondly, Lababidi covers a huge range of subjects. From Nietzsche to belly-dancing, indeed! What is impressive, however, is not so much the range itself as the aplomb with which he disports himself there. Kafka, Kierkegaard, Montaigne, et al., rub shoulders with Michael Jackson and "Ramadan TV." But I like the fact that he don't blur distinctions either. These writers or entertainers are treated on their own terms. I'm not a fan of Michael Jackson, or of Susan Sontag, for that matter, but Lababidi persuades me to an unexpected sympathy with them, at least while I'm reading his essays. The ability to reveal or to create affinities is the secret gift of the greatest essayists, in my view, and Lababidi does this impressively often in Trial by Ink. There is also a finely calibrated sense of the absurd, the whimsical, the slyly surrealistic throughout. And this has the unexpected but quite genuine effect of strengthening and emphasizing not only the literary but the moral seriousness of the essays. Finally, there is something which is difficult to express: this book has a distinctive flavour, the unmistakable flavour of a sensibility. This unites the essays, however disparate in topic. But this "taste" is what draws the reader into the book and entices him from one essay to the next. The book becomes an exploration on which the reader embarks. This is one of the elements in collections of essays I most appreciate--this secret invitation au voyage which the author holds out--and Lababidi does this extremely well--with courtesy as well as cunning. The reader is like Bartleby (in my favourite of these essays) who prefers not to but here is persuaded otherwise." -Eric Ormsby, author of Ghazali (Makers of the Muslim World)